Saturday, October 31, 2015

Sowas

Saturday, October 17, 2015

The Road to Damascus, via Miami

False-casting inclined
imitative of the midge snuffles the sconce;My circumventive theory of
mind provokes a frigid responseIn those for whom lies are
valueless catacombs, catacombs, sealed,And who do not note
fundamental wordings in Hayden, Masefield,Keats and Cummings as
properties of truth. I felt this jarringRigor by false-cast in its
other meaning, when someone, barringThe sheath I was wearing, lay
there suddenly tense. The sheath repulsedJust as my making things up
would do; and the artist sprawls convulsedUpon the sand dunes, hugging
himself so that the lower left flapOf the tweed jacket
bequeathed by his father makes elegant gapOf grief, riding over towards
his right shoulder.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Fundamental Wordings

This news story has materialised, delightfully, six weeks before I am due to
return to the Ettington Park Hotel.Ultimately, there were
several instalments to the work inspired by my visit to Ettington. I am
re-publishing two of them here, because they mark the particular juncture where
I first began to connect with the work of the painter Andrew Salgado.Interestingly, in the first
piece, I used the word “storytelling” before I was aware that Andrew had given
his 2014 solo exhibition at the Beers Gallery that title. The imagery in the second poem’s development centres on the temple, and again I did not know that he had already completed a painting called “Temple”.The parallels have continued.
Earlier this year, I wrote a poem called “The Quiet Man”, while Andrew was
thinking about calling his forthcoming exhibition in Miami, “A Quiet Man”.Once he had announced his
title, I decided to write a further poem in which I use the phrase, “a quiet
man”. An excerpt from this poem, “Lines for Farkhunda”, is now to be included in
the catalogue for his exhibition, which will take place in Miami this
coming December.Here, below, are the two instalments, the first preceded by introductory passages:I started writing a poem for
Halloween this morning, whilst I was staying with my family at Ettington Park
Hotel, reputed to be the most haunted hotel in England.It is inspired by a discussion I had with my
daughter yesterday evening, in which, in an effort to stop her from feeling
frightened, I told her of a secret people, operating furtively and with humour
between the cohorts of Believers and Sceptics. "Do not fear, nor dismiss,
be a Storyteller, like the night manager who told us of the screaming lady,
stage phenomena, like the concierge who, before it was stolen, periodically
pulled out Walter Scott's book and left it open at the same page on the
library's floor."Before going to bed, my
daughter and I climbed the stairs where there have been sightings of a murdered
female servant, walked hand in hand along detergent-smelling corridors, the
carpet sibilant under our feet, pushed heavy doors that squeaked as they closed
slowly behind us, lingered outside room number 7, where guests have reported
being awakened by another apparition trying to gain admittance, before sneaking
into the darkened Long Gallery.The small round tables looked
like they had been arranged for a conference, and on one of them we placed an
early draft of the following lines in an open book of French sonnets. "How
long", I said, "before the night manager is telling new guests of the
time the cleaner found enigmatic words, my words, in a book of Italian
sonnets?" "It was French sonnets", she answered. "But that
is how hearsay works, publish through hearsay and there's no need to be
frightened or cynical. Be a storyteller."Lines on Ettington Park
Hotel, published through hearsayWhosoever stole Saint Ronan's
Well,For to piously arrest the
spellThat holds The Library, or to
canIt to insert into a less thanGrand shelf, in some prosaic
study,Threatens lore and the art of
story-telling, the night manager,
alas;And Narnia would be clothes
moth frassBut for a book of ItalianSonnets, and the verse lying
therein,Incongruous English verse, in the Long Gallery.Lines on Ettington Park continuedWhen I was drunk and fingery in a clinch,Athwart my wife’s flesh with the same reverse-pinchI use to enlarge things on my iPhone's screen –Dissolute, nails untrimmed – my eyes were not keen,Wont to hide as one who feels undeserving;But now I sit with her in the Great DrawingRoom of the Ettington Park Hotel, where inCeladon surrounds a strategy to winSalgado’s painting at auction emerges,And something inside me reaches out, surgesOut from my temple and into the sourAir: a child's pronated hand, or art’s powerTo reconcile, disincarnate before me,Limpid, in phase with my own precarity.Disincarnate art’s power to reconcile,Is my soul, divested of body, tactileTo your touch? Outside of life and odiousCulture, out of phase with death and Proteus,You remain a child in perpetuity:Is your hand an aura, tantalisingly,Of my own hand, or if lowered, might it feel?For so long, for so long, I have felt less real,And now, by your presence, this sense is affirmed:Have I cheated constant changing patterns termedOf Proteus forever, or will I goBack? The intermediary, Salgado,Shall not suppress what is colourful, nor ISuppress those sparks in shade cast memetic byOng’s arboreal hat that moves bough to bough,Bowlering. Milestones, attained, are worthless now,As you glide, wizened, not stepping, nor speaking.

Thursday, October 08, 2015

I have written to
the MoD asking them to consider me for the particle of War Poet. With homelands
being extirpated several ways by US and Russian and terrorist forces, I feel
that what is missing is a poet's voice, and I should like to travel to Nizar
Qabbani's grave in Damascus in a profound act of conciliation.

Lip Service

Khikkiana, my manuscript is
listed as "in stock" and "used".We stood in the same room,
once, but Yeats knew me not.On this National Poetry Day,
when performance is confusedWith the literary form, and a
black dotOn the palm is missed,
Palmyra, like the women's literarySalons, destroyed, I see a
man on the path to Lee Wood:Grimy swab for a clarinet,The Chomsky and Foucault
debate,The making of ormus (wet),To fork, to flocculate.Khikkiana, the sun is
flickeringAs geese fly overhead, squeakingLike a train carriage swaying, soundflowers swaying,Swaying, and I walk
self-exclusive, detached from circumstances,Through the Cemetery of
Desolation.